Reflections
by Coral
Summary: Kathryn Janeway looks back on years of loneliness, and wonders what has happened...


Reflections  
By Coral   
  
  
  
Disclaimer: If they will admit they've taken my life away, I will admit they are Paramount's...  
Dedication: To Aquiel, for meaning more to me than she'll ever know.  
  
  
  
I look at my reflection in the glass panel door before it sweeps aside to let me enter. I've changed so much, you wouldn't recognise me anymore. My hair is grey and unkempt, my eyes are dull and heavy and my skin is wrinkled. I look about fifty years older than I am.  
But I'm not surprised by my appearance. I haven't been truly alive since the day you disappeared from Earth twenty years ago; I've only existed. I survive from day to day, just praying for the moment you walk back in the door and into my life. I fulfil my duties, but there is no pleasure. Just existence.  
I haven't given up, and I won't. I searched for eight years before finally stopping after my last lead turned out to nothing on Bajor. I returned to Starfleet Command, tail between my legs, and they offered me a teaching position at Starfleet Academy. I had nothing else to live for - I accepted. And I've been here, teaching, for the past twelve years - that's longer than we were on Voyager. I'm close to Command - just in case one day, you should miraculously return, or even call. There's so much I wanted to say to you, and now I never can.  
The door hisses quietly shut, leaving me to face the group of thirty young cadets. I saw them walk into this classroom for the first time two months ago; each bright-eyed, bushy tailed, ready and eager to learn. To strive to become the best that they could be. Now, they   
look bored my apathy having alienated them and dulled my lessons. At first they come in curious; curious to see the Great Captain Kathryn Janeway, she who had led her crew safely through the Delta Quadrant. And after that first day, they all leave disappointed. I'm not that person anymore, if I ever was. I'm not sure what they expect, but a broken woman with no hopes, no dream, no future and a mantel of world weariness and hopelessness is probably not it. They come to see a perfect Starfleet Officer; they leave disillusioned.  
It happens less now, though. I don't get that air of expectancy as much. I'm not stupid; I know why. I've heard the whispers throughout Starfleet. How Captain Kathryn Janeway's great pioneering spirit was broken along with her heart; how the woman who could bring a crew home from where no one had gone before was destroyed by one action. I'm held up as an example of why not to grow too close to a crewmember.  
Eventually, it can kill you.  
I thought about that, once or twice. Stepping onto a transporter pad set to disperse my pattern. Stepping into a malfunctioning airlock. Breaking the environmental controls in my apartment. Anything. But I can't actually be bothered to do anything.  
Ironic. I can't be bothered to live; I can't be bothered to end it all either. All I can do is exist from day to day, killing myself slowly through neglect. Lots of coffee, no food, no real health care: I often stop and wonder how I'm even still alive. On the worst days, I'm moved to ask if maybe someone up there is torturing me and laughing at my expense. At other times, I wonder how this happened to me. How did all my dreams and aspirations turn into this dreary, monotonous roll by of days? Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year I stand in this room and teach about the Delta Quadrant; a make-work assignment if ever I heard one, but I can't be bothered to call Starfleet's bluff. I go to all the right functions, I work, and I sleep.   
And through it all, I wonder where I went wrong.  
What did I do, or what didn't I do, that pushed you away? Would things have been different if I hadn't rebuffed your advances? Or should I have given you more hope, or a stronger promise? It nags at me like a continual ache; the pain of wondering what I could have done   
differently. 'Could have been's can be soul destroying, and after twenty years, I'm wondering if I have a soul left. It seems entirely possible that the last shred of Kathryn Janeway went with you that day. What's left behind is a soulless husk; an empty shell that teaches poor cadets without any passion behind the imparting of her knowledge.  
We're doing Kazon culture today. The words fall from my lips automatically; twelve years of teaching the same thing means that I have it by rote. I remember hating that teaching style - the lecturer who droned on and blatantly did not care for her subject - but I find myself indifferent. I don't have the energy to change. I don't care about the subject. I don't care for anything, not even myself, anymore.  
As I look over the rows of cadets, I see myself as a cadet reflected. I want to tell them to keep hold of those youthful dreams, and never let them go. I want them to know that there is no obstacle to high, if only they have the courage to keep living and loving and caring.  
I don't. I lost it when you left.  
We're all relieved when the class finally ends. The cadets rush off as quickly as they can without seeming impolite; the weather is hot and sunny, and most of them would rather be elsewhere. Minutes later I can see them spreading out across the grounds, in little friendship groups of twos, threes, fours. They are talking, laughing, smiling... just happy to be with friends, and to have people to care for.  
To care for... I have no one to care for any more. As a child I used to have a dog. As a Captain, I had a crew and friends on that crew. Now...  
Now I'm standing alone on the top floor of Starfleet Academy's least used building. I know that most of the classrooms around me are empty and abandoned; it may explain why this building is one of the few places I spend time apart from my apartment. I feel an affinity for this place, as much as I can feel anything nowadays. The wide classrooms windows give a view over the Academy grounds, which are always full of people living. I can stand and watch them for hours, trying to remember what interacting with people was like.  
And imposed over the moving tapestry of life below is my reflection. In stark contrast to the brilliance and fullness of living below, my reflection is empty and dead. I see a woman who only exists for one purpose: to pray that one day she can tell you something she never did, and should have done. Four little words: "I love you, Chakotay." The sheer hopelessness of the situation would be enough to break my heart, if it weren't already shattered in a thousand irreparable pieces.  
Can that dead woman really be me?  
  
=/\=End=/\=  



End file.
